Treatment of Juvenile Macular Degeneration
Advanced Cell Technology has some promising work on stem cells for the treatment of Stargardt’s disease, a form of juvenile macular degeneration. The greater importance of this work is that efforts to treat Stargardt’s disease is the possible future application to the much larger population of patients who have age-related macular degeneration.
"During the first quarter of this year, ACT made significant progress in securing sites to conduct our Phase 1/2 clinical trials for Stargardt’s Macular Dystrophy (SMD) and Dry Age-Related Macular Degeneration (Dry AMD), as reflected by our recent announcement that the Jules Stein Eye Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has received institutional review board (IRB) approval to be a site for both the SMD and AMD trials using retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells derived from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs),” said Gary Rabin, interim Chairman and CEO of ACT. “We also recently filed a clinical trial application with the European Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) seeking clearance to initiate a similar SMD trial in Europe. We believe that these trials represent excellent opportunities to evaluate the potential for RPE cells to repair and regenerate the retina.”
From the Advanced Cell Technology website:
From http://www.actcblog.com/2011/05/advanced-cell-technology-announces-2011-first-quarter-results.html
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